


Character Study

by Thimblerig



Category: Salvation (TV)
Genre: Books, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Job Interview, Lunch, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 15:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16267517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Lunch with the Great Darius Tanz is... not what Jillian was expecting.





	Character Study

It really is the best beef-and-cashew taco she's tasted, hot, tender, fragrant. Jillian takes another small bite. It's… unnerving, being this close to Darius Tanz. Her mind flicks back to an account of Lisztomania - sober Germans falling into hysterics and obsessions in the presence of the composer - and wonders how much of his intensity is a conjuring of the… hype.

The entrepreneur hands her his own lunch without warning and dashes across the square, his coat swinging about his legs as he runs, and comes back with two water-beaded bottles of lemon-lime Ramune in his hands. He trades her a bottle for food and watches her as he eats, dark eyes impish as she opens it. The condensation is cold on her fingers; the bead in the neck of the bottle rattles as she drinks.

“Tell me about the publishing history of your book,” Tanz commands.

Jillian squints at him, wary. “There's not much to tell. A bit too sentimental for the techy crowd, not enough characters for Chick Lit.” She kicks her sneakered foot against the concrete and muses, “There was one publishing house, said they might give it a go if I changed the ending and made the protagonist a guy.” She smiles tightly. “By which point I was all,  _ Screw you, I wrote this for my Mom.” _

He watches her face, interested. “That's why you gave up the scholarship.”

Startled, Jillian draws back. “I never told any- did you  _ hack  _ the univ- Where do you get  _ off, _ Mr Tanz?”

He holds up a hand in a bid for peace. “I'm a good guesser,” he tells her, dark eyes rueful. “I did read a background vetting it's true, as any potential employee is vetted.” He's watching her again. “Your grades were good enough; that's when your mother got sick. I'm a good guesser but it wasn't much of a stretch.”

“There are many ways to get an education,” Jillian tells him austerely. “I was down to one last chance to sit with my Mom.” She's wounded him with that and she doesn't know why, but he gestures to continue, one knee tucked up and his elbow resting on it… she wonders how much a given minute of his time is worth, and how much she's already cost Tanz Industries on her self-publishing vanity project.  _ Yikes. _

“At first I was just making up the story to keep her entertained,” Jillian says slowly, painfully. “All the different adventures and the japes. She didn't like sitting still for the chemo. Then when she had to keep to a wheelchair - she  _ hated _ that, Mr Tanz, she used to be a runner - I don't know, I kept wishing she'd fight  _ harder. _ ” She stops, swallowing back the familiar lump of guilt, and says at last, “there was a lot of wishing that went into the first half.”

“Mm,” he says thoughtfully, “Your sentence structures and paragraph length shift about then. I was interested in the use of colour words, especially in the cavern sequence near the end, did you write that early?”

“No, I wanted to echo the beginning without getting preachy.” And they talk literary technique for ten minutes, because apparently tech geniuses do book reports in their spare time.

“There was only one way I knew how to travel with her, in the end,” Jillian says at last. She's never really talked about that with anyone, not even her father. But Tanz  _ listens. _ So she tells him: “That's why I finished the story.”

“‘When the last backup plan has failed,’” he quotes softly, “‘and your skills are taken from you, and all that you are is a creature creeping through the dark on the shadow side of Hope…’”

“I know it's sentimental, Mr Tanz,” she says, looking away. “I wasn't ever going to change it.” 

“Of course not.” He grins, impish again. “There was something you had to do and you  _ did it. _ ” And he bounds to his feet again, a pocket mistral. “I have to go. Thank you for lunch.”

“Uh, you're welcome.”

“And there's a job waiting for you, if you want it,” he calls over his shoulder.

“In the publishing branch?” she calls.

“The think-tank.” Tanz grins toothily. “It'll be fun!” 

**Author's Note:**

> It seemed to me that given the recent death in Jillian's family she might have put a lot of feelings about that into her novel, and given Tanz's backstory those themes might resound in his soul. Er, as it were. In any case, there needed to be a _reason_ he wanted her for the think tank in particular, so... 
> 
> // https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisztomania - Franz Liszt
> 
> // https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramune - a brand of lemonade developed in Japan. Traditionally has a glass bead trapped in the neck to keep things fresh. Pretty cool, _ne?_


End file.
